Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek have dominated the WTA Tour for the past few years, winning nine of the past 15 Grand Slams between them.
But when the draw for the women’s singles at the Australian Open was made last week, both Sabalenka and Swiatek might have breathed a sigh of relief.
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That’s because they were drawn in opposite halves to two players who have made their lives difficult in the past. For Sabalenka, it’s Amanda Anisimova; for Swiatek, it’s Coco Gauff.
Swiatek leads Gauff 11-5, but the American has won their past four meetings, all in straight sets. Anisimova leads Sabalenka 6-5, although the Belarusian has won three of the past four.
Head-to-head records are important in tennis; the one-on-one nature of the sport means that when one player has the wool over another, they often continue to beat them, even if their opponent is ranked higher or has been in better form.
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“In the past I used to think about it so much because you want to get the one win,” Gauff said Monday at the Australian Open. “I think once I got that … I erased the other matches.
“Obviously, [Swiatek] is a great player, and she deserved those wins, but I felt like a lot of those — some of those losses, I won’t say a lot, because she just outplayed me, but some of them, at least at the beginning, it just was already on the mental deficit. I think once I erased that mental deficit, I was able to play free.”
Gauff said Swiatek was the only player who made her feel that way. Winning one match was liberating. “There was no other head-to-head in tennis where I had that, so it was very difficult to navigate,” she said. “Now I feel like I’m able to play free. Obviously, it’s still a big gap in the head-to-head. I just erase it from my mind. Can’t change the past, but I learned from it.”
No. 3-ranked Gauff has won the French Open and US Open but hasn’t made it past the semifinals of the Australian Open. Ira Cordero/ESPN
And when the winning streak ends, tennis players will often tell themselves whatever they need to in order to maintain their confidence. Swiatek, who won her sixth major title at Wimbledon last summer, is not immune, it seems.
“Honestly, it doesn’t [play on my mind],” Swiatek said. “Also, when I was winning against her, it didn’t. That’s why I guess it was possible for me to continue because I wasn’t taking it for granted or … coming to a match unfocused.
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“I guess it kind of tells you something more about maybe the game or things you should work on or improve because, you know, also she improved. So yeah, but the head-to-head I guess doesn’t really matter. Maybe for her, if you ask her the same question, it’s different.”
Swiatek even overlooked the fact that she had played Gauff as recently as this month when she lost to the American at the United Cup. “I guess I just really want to treat every match as a separate story,” she said. “Every match also is in different conditions. So there’s no point to, like, always come back [to it]. Last time we played was Madrid, also it was over six months [ago]. It’s kind of long in tennis life. It’s not like a whole story for me. It’s more about how I feel that month or that week and how she feels, how we’re going to play against each other. That’s it.”
And it’s also possible for head-to-heads to turn around.
Roger Federer lost the first three and then seven of his first nine matches against Lleyton Hewitt, and lost the first four and six of the first seven against Britain’s Tim Henman, but ended up with a winning record against both. Chris Evert led Martina Navratilova 22-4 at one stage but ended up trailing 43-37. And even Vitas Gerulaitis won one match against Jimmy Connors, prompting the famous line: “No one beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row.”
Amanda Anisimova (left) won her first four meetings with Aryna Sabalenka in straight sets. But more recently, Sabalenka has won five of the past seven matches. AP Photo/Fatima Shbair
Anisimova won her first four meetings with Sabalenka in straight sets, matching the Belarusian’s power from the baseline. “We’ve had a lot of difficult matches,” Anisimova said last summer. “We’ve gone three sets in a lot of them. I think we’re both big hitters, and big hitters like to go at it against each other. I feel like we always bring the best in each other’s game, and we always raise the level when we play against each other. I mean, I always enjoy the challenge that she brings. I’m sure it’s the same vice versa.”
Sabalenka has managed to stem the tide, though, winning five of the past seven matches, including in the final of the US Open last September.
There are other contenders, of course, but with Gauff in Sabalenka’s half and Anisimova in with Swiatek, any meeting at the Australian Open with their nemeses can happen only in the final.
Whatever they might say, if that happens, the records will be somewhere in the back of their minds.
